


Where Everything is Good

by iaquilam



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Indie Singer!Neil, M/M, POV Andrew Minyard, Past Child Abuse, Producer!Andrew, Rock Star!Kevin, it's not that angsty i promise, it's the foxes so canon typical warnings I guess, musician au, this is pretty self-indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 23:46:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11451561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iaquilam/pseuds/iaquilam
Summary: “Shut up,” Andrew says, and lets the door slam shut behind him. It’s satisfying in a petty sort of way, but he’s never claimed to take the higher road. “I do not care if you are recording.”“Your friend is charming,” a voice says drily from the corner, and Andrew pulls up short.Two things: he was not expecting Neil Josten to be here already. And he was not expecting Neil Josten to have a voice the color of the sky at noon.Neil Josten is a singer with a dark past and smart mouth. Andrew Minyard is a music producer who has synesthesia and secrets of his own. Their paths cross the day Andrew realizes he has never seen a voice quite like Neil's.





	Where Everything is Good

**Author's Note:**

> HI GUYS I'M BACK! I wasn't planning on having such a long gap in between my last fic and this one, but life got in the way. in any case, I'm here now bearing the musician!au andreil no one asked for. 
> 
> couple things before we get started:  
> -Andrew has synesthesia in this fic. the semantics of that are briefly explained in the story, but if you've never heard of it before you may want to google "color auditory synesthesia" because I myself have synesthesia and therefore find it hard to explain it to people who don't.  
> -someone on Tumblr gave me the idea of neil being an indie singer so credit goes to them for that (if you're reading this....I don't remember your url....I'm sorry...)  
> -I really don't know how the music industry works so all the information in this fiction may or may not be accurate because is it based on some very basic research and my own assumptions.  
> -title comes from the Lorde song "Buzzcut Season"  
> -that's all have fun kids

The sky is fading from red to purple by the time Andrew Minyard steps out of the studio. It’s one of those quiet nights where even the honking of Columbia traffic seems distant and dreamy as the still-glowing clouds, but Andrew’s head is ringing with residual noise. He’s been working all day, and all it’s done is put him in a foul mood; the deadline for the production on Kevin’s sample is tomorrow if he doesn’t want the label to kick his ass again, and he’s nowhere near satisfied with what he has so far. 

Scuffing the toes of his heavy boots into the cracked pavement, he crosses the parking lot behind the studio—Matt always tells him not to go back there alone, but in a half-joking manner; they both know that the worst thing in the lot will always be Andrew—and clicks open the driver’s door of the last car in the lot. It’s the sleek Maserati Andrew’s had since high school, a monster of a machine as quietly powerful and black-clad as he is. He puts the keys in the ignition, turns up the air, and turns down the radio. If he hears another note of music today he swears he’ll crash the fucking car. Especially because Riko’s new single dropped last week, and it’s all that the DJs have been talking about on the Top 40 stations. Andrew allows himself a moment of pure annoyance—the only emotion he’ll ever be able to spare for Kevin’s one time duet partner and current nemesis—and pulls out of the parking lot in the direction of the trashy Chinese take-out place near his apartment. Usually he’d be satisfied with ice cream, but it’s a been a long day, and even he can realize he needs something solid in his stomach. 

By the time he’s in the elevator of his apartment building, he can feel his phone buzzing in his pocket, and knows without looking that it’s Kevin, because when the fuck is it not Kevin? When Andrew had signed on to be the producer for Kevin’s solo career back in college, he hadn’t thought he’d also be acting as part-time therapist. Leave it to the world to play that particular joke on him. 

Even though he entertains the idea of not picking up for a solid minute, his phone is still buzzing when he closes the door of his apartment behind him, and so he picks up, mainly because he knows Kevin will give him no peace unless he does. 

“What,” Andrew says, a question without the inflection of a question. He places his carton of orange chicken onto the counter and goes to his liquor cabinet. He still has some of that whiskey Nicky and Eric had gotten him for his birthday, and if Kevin’s incessant calling is any indication of his mood, tonight is a good night to use it. 

“I have a proposal for you.” Kevin’s rough red voice sounds surprisingly sober, which gives Andrew hope that this may be a short conversation. 

“What is it.”

“I’m—” There’s a long pause, and then the sound of liquid sloshing. Andrew’s hope of a brief chat goes out the window. “Imthinkingofhavingafeatureonthisalbum.”

Andrew flicks on the light in his living room and settles down on his sofa, glass in hand. “Is that so. Well, if I had any idea what the fuck you just said, I might have been able to help you, but as it is, you are going to have to repeat it a little slower for the class.”

“I’m thinking of having—of having a feature on this a-album.”

Andrew allows one eyebrow to raise a fraction of an inch. “Is that so.” He opens the carton of Chinese food and reaches for the remote, waiting for Kevin’s reply as he flicks through the channels before settling on a true crime show and turning the volume all the way down. 

“I—” For a moment there’s just the sound of Kevin hyperventilating, and then he just follows it up with, “Yes.”

Andrew takes a moment to reflect on the absurdity of his current situation. He’s one of the world’s most sought-after music producers, listening to Kevin Day, one of the world’s most famous musical artists, have a panic attack about an album feature. It seems so petty that to anyone else it would be impossible to understand. But that is, after all, why Kevin called him: Andrew understands. 

When Andrew had met Kevin in college, Kevin had been a rowboat set adrift from one of the music world’s most powerful ships: Evermore management, a recording label whose chief money making act was the Ravens, a duo comprised of Riko Moriyama, the son of the family that ran Evermore, and Kevin Day, his best friend and near-brother. Earlier in the year, the Ravens had announced they were going on hiatus, a move that put the music industry in shock. Only months later, Riko was releasing a solo album. Kevin, for his part, resurfaced in a middle-grade vocal performance program at Palmetto State University—the very school Andrew attended for music production and sound mixing. While there were many rumors surrounding the duo’s split, Andrew was one of the few that learned the truth from Kevin that year: Riko had gotten jealous of Kevin’s growing individual fanbase and had injured his left hand, impairing his ability to play the guitar for the duo. While that alone wasn’t enough to convince the Moriyamas to break up their cash cow, Riko persuaded them he would be more successful as a solo artist; subsequently, the hiatus had been announced, and Kevin had been sent to Palmetto to be kept out of Riko’s spotlight. 

Just as Kevin was getting ready to give up singing altogether, Andrew had stepped in. He didn’t care much for Kevin’s sob story, but it gave him something to do that broke up the boring greyness of the world off his meds—although that particular part of the story doesn’t need remembering tonight, Andrew reflects—and so they’d become a team, of sorts. Andrew offered to help Kevin get his vocals and guitar back in shape, find him a new record label, and help him discover his own sound outside of Riko’s influence, and Kevin had promised to land him a job and a future. It was a weak link to life for a wave of self-destruction like Andrew, but it’s gotten him this far. The people who had once been his only ties to an increasingly monotonous existence—his twin Aaron and cousin Nicky—no longer need him, but Andrew is still here, producing Kevin’s albums and getting writing and mixing credits on songs with artists all around the world. 

But this is why Kevin called him: Andrew knows all of this. He understands Kevin’s anguished and complex relationship with his music, and he knows the real reason why Kevin, a wildly successful rockstar, still hasn’t featured a single artist on any of his tracks despite being in the midst of writing and recording his third solo album. Kevin is terrified of his hard-won identity being swallowed again. After years of being suppressed and abused by Riko in every way imaginable, Kevin is petrified by the thought of giving another artist even an iota of control over his creative process. 

“Who is the artist,” Andrew asks when it becomes apparent that Kevin will not be elaborating. Kevin doesn’t respond, just loudly and raggedly breathes into the phone. “Kevin. I cannot help you if you do not tell me.”

“Neil Josten.”

A prickle of annoyance simmers down Andrew’s spine, the strongest emotion he’s felt in days. Not that he’s grateful for it. “Who?”

“Wymack just signed him to the label.”

Andrew is now doubly annoyed: first at the fact that Kevin is putting his already-fragile mental stability on the line for some unknown that won’t even help his album sales, and secondly because Wymack hadn’t told Andrew there was a new artist signing on with the Foxhole Court. 

“I have never heard of him,” is all he says. Sometimes he really admires his own restraint. 

“Like I said, he’s new to the label.” Kevin hesitates. “You might have heard of him under the name Nathaniel Wesninski.”

Andrew frowns and searches his memory for the name. After a moment, it clicks: Nathaniel Wesninski had been a largely unimpressive pop singer linked to one of Evermore’s sub-labels, a small company called the Baltimore Butcher’s Shop. Though his music had been a little edgier than most of the label’s machine produced bubblegum pop, it had been obvious to Andrew that his heart wasn’t in it, and he’d faded into obscurity after a flop of a first album. Andrew had maybe heard one of his songs, and even that probably only once, and if he recalls correctly, the melody and the vocals had clashed and muddied to the point where Andrew couldn’t make out any color at all. Nathaniel had been singing the wrong kind of music for his voice, which made him supremely unbearable to listen to (and consequently, Andrew didn’t listen to him). What Andrew mainly remembers about him was that he’d possessed a set of stunning good looks that Andrew hadn’t minded looking at one bit. 

“His father owned the Butcher’s Shop.”

“Yeah.”

“Probably the only way his shitty album got made in the first place.”

“His father wrote that for him,” Kevin says. “It’s a long story, and it’s not mine. He can tell it to you himself. What do you think of the collab?”

Andrew actually has no legal control over Kevin’s music—he’s actually only loosely affiliated with the Foxhole Court label at all; working with other artists had been a condition of his signing—and so it’s not necessary that Kevin get his approval. But he knows that Kevin needs it anyway—the other man has been so conditioned to look for approval that he needs Andrew’s validation. It’s a detail of Kevin’s personality that Andrew vehemently hates, and not only because it’s annoying. He hates it because Riko beat that need into Kevin so strongly that Kevin will never be able to get it out. 

“Why did he change his name?”

“Rebranding.” Kevin is a little calmer by now, which is a blessing, at least. “He’s an indie act now.”

That’s enough to pique Andrew’s interest. It’s been a while since the Foxhole Court had an indie singer signed with them, and changing his act might mean that more of Josten’s heart is in his music now. And indie music will probably blend better with Kevin’s rockier vibes than pop, anyway. 

“Go for it if you want to,” Andrew says. “I have orange chicken to get back to. I will see you tomorrow at the studio.”

“Okay.” Kevin waits just long enough that Andrew knows he’s going to say something Andrew won’t like. “Neil is going to be there tomorrow.”

“ _What_?”

“Yeah, I—I figured he could come in just—just to mess around a little? Get used to the equipment and do some jamming.”

Andrew doesn’t like when Kevin manages to surprise him, and this is no exception. He hadn’t thought Kevin had the guts to arrange a meeting with Josten without anyone’s approval. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just—Andrew hadn’t been expecting it. And he likes to see things coming. 

“Fine,” he snaps. “I will see you and Josten tomorrow at the studio. See that he brings his best material.” 

He hangs up before Kevin can respond and bitterly picks up his chopsticks. Now he has to deal with seeing Josten tomorrow. He can already tell it’s going to be a long day. 

***

Renee had been the one to realize that Andrew has synesthesia. They’d been building a playlist for an upcoming road trip of hers, and she’d suggested putting “Closer” and “Give Me Love” next to each other on the lineup. Andrew had looked at her in disgust. 

“Give Me Love is not a good driving song, and putting two songs that are the same color next to each other is boring and ugly. Break it up with a red song.”

She’d looked at him with a strange expression and then handed him her phone. “You do it.”

He’d scowled and added “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark” to replace “Give Me Love.” “It’s too fucking slow, Renee. Do you want to fall asleep at the wheel?”

But that hadn’t been the source of Renee’s confusion. “What did you mean by that song being red?”

A few minutes of frustrated explaining later, Andrew had been in the possession of the jarring knowledge that not everyone can see music and voices. In fact, relatively few people have synesthesia, a neurological condition that mixes up the senses so you experience one sense in relation to another. After a bit of quick googling, Renee had said his type was called Color Auditory Synesthesia, which meant that he saw music and voices as displays of color. 

Andrew had been thoroughly unimpressed with the knowledge. 

“Are you done?” he’d asked tiredly a good thirty minutes into Renee’s fascinated research. “I don’t give a shit about this.” _It’s just another way my brain is fucked up,_ he wants to say but doesn’t. 

“How can you not?” Renee had asked, looking up with wide eyes. “It’s a gift. God gave you this, and it’s beautiful.”

Andrew scoffed at that, not least because he didn’t think God had given him anything but bad luck in life. “It’s just normal for me. I see it everyday, Renee. It’s nothing special.” But there was a part of him that filed the information away with a sense of glowing pride at the thought that his everyday reality was in some way special to other people. Special in a good way. It was the first time that had happened, ever. 

These days, Andrew is used to the knowledge of his synesthesia. He steers away from describing music with colors when he’s working with his clients, even Kevin, and when he comes up with an unexpected chord progression that he’d thought of in color first, he fields questions about how he’d come up with it with blank stares. It’s not that he’s trying to hide it, it’s just that people get unreasonably enchanted with the idea of synesthesia, and Andrew has consciously spent his life trying to disenchant people with the idea of him in general. And anyway, it’s incredibly distracting for other people—tell an artist he’s working with he has synesthesia, and suddenly they’re no longer working on a project but instead playing clips of all of their songs asking, “So what color is this? What about this? What about my voice? What color is that?” 

Frankly, it’s ridiculous. So Andrew tells people only when he has to.

The song that he uses as his alarm is blue—blue is one of the rarest colors to see for melodies, and as a result Andrew doesn't mind seeing it first thing in the morning everyday. It makes the first few minutes of the morning—the ones where Andrew reaches for his knives because he can’t tell the difference between dreams and reality—a little more bearable. He has yet to hear someone with a blue voice: songs come in much more varied colors than voices, which usually fall into a variety of warmer shades. Browns, reds, and the like are the most common. 

Today when his alarm goes off, though, he’s not calmed even by the wash of blue he sees when he opens his eyes. Drake’s voice is hissing through his ears, mingling with the sound of his own voice: _please, please, please, please_ —

It’d been a long night. Worse than usual. 

Andrew allows himself a few minutes to just lay in bed. He needs a bit of time to let the numbness pour down into him like a rainfall. He’s pinned down by the force of it, pushed down into the mattress by the weight in his chest.

His bones have been made of iron for years now. Nothing to see new here. 

After what feels like an eternity, he sits up and swings his feet over the side of his bed, hands already sliding under his pillow to pull out his armbands. There’s no one here to see his scars or slash at with his knives, but the familiar weight of them feels comforting—a weight he can control, can take on and off at will. 

He takes a shower, eats a sugary concoction that claims to be a protein bar for breakfast, and heads down to the parking structure without further ado. Life is supremely boring for a man like Andrew, but one of its most boring qualities is that it goes on, whether Andrew is having a bad day or not. 

Matt is leaving the studio just as Andrew is pulling into the parking lot; despite being buffeted by the brisk wind, he’s wearing a t shirt and an obnoxiously wide smile. Andrew, who’s no fan of the taller man, braces himself to be assaulted by unassailable cheerfulness. 

“Andrew! My man!”

His voice is so loud that Andrew can hear him even through the closed windows of his car. Andrew takes the time to park, light a cigarette, and walk over as slowly as possible before responding. 

“Matt.”

“How are we doing this lovely morning?”

Andrew tilts his head back and blinks, once and slowly. Matt somehow doesn’t let this deter him. 

“I just finished dropping in to work a bit with Kevin, but he doesn’t seem like he’s in a cooperative mood today, so I left him to it and just chatted with Allison; she's in the building today for a meeting. She and Renee are moving in together, did you know that?”

“I did,” Andrew says indifferently. Allison Reynolds, the Foxhole Court’s publicist, had also gone to Palmetto a few years ahead of Andrew. If Andrew remembers correctly, she’d been dating a boneheaded athlete back then. But after graduation, he’d done something that was unforgivable to her—Andrew thinks he cheated, but he has a personal policy of tuning out all of Allison’s gossip, so he’s not sure—and they’d broken up for good. A few years after that, she and Renee had started dating, an arrangement that Andrew vaguely approves of only because it seems to make Renee happy. 

“I’m so fucking happy for them!” Matt says brightly. “They’re going to have such a cute apartment, have you seen the pictures?”

“No,” Andrew says, “because I do not care to.”

Once again, Matt refuses to let this deter him. “Okay, well, if you’re going in to work with Kevin, just know he’s on edge today. I’m sure you know why. Oh, and tell him that if he’s still interested in having that track we discussed for the album, he’s going to have to call me about it soon, because I’ll give it to someone else otherwise. It’s too good to sit on hold for him, even if he’s our cash cow. Anyway—I’m going to head out. I’m driving down to spend the weekend with Dan tonight, and I need to pack and clean the apartment. See you later!”

Matt bounces away to his ancient pickup truck, throwing a long-limbed wave over his shoulder. Andrew exhales a long stream of smoke into the sky, asks whatever cosmic deities might actually exist for patience, and heads towards the studio doors. Matt is well-intentioned, but he wears Andrew’s nerves to a thread. Andrew much prefers his girlfriend, Dan, who at least knows when to shut the fuck up. Unfortunately, Matt is also an excellent songwriter, so he works with Kevin quite a bit, and Andrew subsequently sees a lot of him than Dan, who has a teaching job down at Palmetto. Andrew can only thank his stars that songwriters and producers don’t usually have to work with each other directly—Matt works on the writing part, and Andrew works on the recording part, so they rarely have to actually collaborate. 

By the time he reaches Kevin’s recording room, the day has already taken so much out of him that he’s not sure how well he’ll be able to deal with Kevin’s shit today. And then Andrew remembers that Neil Josten is supposed to come work with them today, and he just about loses his mind. 

Things that Andrew does not need today: life.

Things Andrew has to deal with today: also life.

He wrenches open the studio door and strides inside without checking to see if Kevin is already recording. 

“Andrew—” 

“Shut up,” Andrew says, and lets the door slam shut behind him. It’s satisfying in a petty sort of way, but he’s never claimed to take the higher road. “I do not care if you are recording.”

“Your friend is charming,” a voice says drily from the corner, and Andrew pulls up short. 

Two things: he was not expecting Neil Josten to be here already. And he was not expecting Neil Josten to have a voice the color of the sky at noon. 

There’s a long moment of silence, and then Andrew rounds on Kevin. 

“You did not say he would be here this early.”

Kevin is pale, sweating, clearly on the edge of a panic attack. Maybe Andrew would be more sympathetic if Kevin hadn’t brought this on himself. “So?”

“So I am distinctly unimpressed with your inclination to keep me out of the loop,” Andrew says with savage precision. His head is still spinning. He’s still too numb from this morning, and Josten isn’t what he was expecting, and _he does not like surprises._  

“You didn’t ask what time he was coming,” Kevin says stubbornly, and Andrew resists the urge to punch a wall, or even better, Kevin’s face. Instead, he turns to face Josten to put the fear of God into him, and once again is drawn up short.

Nathaniel Wesninski had been brown haired and brown eyed, with smooth, light skin and annoyingly symmetrical features. Neil Josten has auburn hair and eyes two shades lighter and icier than his voice. And while his features are still fine-drawn and symmetrical, his face has been ravaged by a set of scars that mottle his skin to the point of disfiguration. Whatever happened to him must have been beyond painful—and very, very deliberate. Andrew knows an intentional maiming when he sees one. 

For the second time in a matter of minutes, Andrew is lost for words; not least because despite the scars, Neil is still unfairly good-looking. 

“Done staring?” Neil asks. His voice is pleasant, even humorous, but Andrew can detect an undercurrent of self-consciousness, even defensiveness in it. Neil is obviously a man who is both unused to and uncomfortable with being looked at.

“Do not flatter yourself,” Andrew says flatly, forcing himself to focus on the meaning of Neil’s words rather than the intoxicating _blueness_ of them. 

“Trust me,” Neil says, “I wasn’t.” Once again, that nearly unnoticeable note of painful awareness. Andrew comes to the abrupt realization that Neil thinks Andrew was ogling his scars rather than just him. For some infuriating reason, Andrew feels the unpleasant weight of that in his chest. 

“Andrew, this is Neil, the artist I told you about” Kevin finally says. His voice is shaky; having Neil here is throwing him off.“Neil, this is Andrew, my producer and sound mixer.”

“I gathered that,” Neil says. “Hi, Andrew.”

Andrew throws him a contemptuous glance and turns away. “What have you done?” When Kevin stares at him at a loss, Andrew makes a sharply impatient hand gesture and snaps, “What have you accomplished today? Surely you did not bring Josten here to make friendship bracelets. Let me hear the music.”

“We’ve just been—fooling around.”

“I bet you were,” Andrew says, flatly enough that the innuendo makes itself. Kevin looks somewhere between outraged and uncomfortable; Neil looks as though it went right over him. “Whatever. Show me whatever you’ve got.”

Neil picks his guitar back up from where he’d put in on the coffee table. “Do you want us in the booth?”

“Is this a final take?” 

“No?”

“You just answered your own question. Just fucking sing.”

“Has anyone ever told you how approachable and articulate you are?” Neil’s painfully blue voice soars through Andrew’s vision like a floating ribbon. This is going to be a fucking problem. Maybe Andrew should just stab him after all. 

“Has anyone ever told you how boring and ridiculous you are?” he counters instead. “Kevin, tell your new pet to watch his mouth before I change my mind about being here.”

“Neil,” Kevin says wearily. “Just play us some chords, maybe?”

Neil mock-salutes him and strums out a few chords. They’re random at first, searching for a color and a pattern before resolving themselves into a smooth yellow melody that lilts out of the guitar and bounces off the walls. Kevin nods along, watching his fingers closely and waiting for the perfect moment before—

_She’s like a bomb going off in slow motion,_

_I’m sucked into her, she’s an ocean,_

_Baby, let me dive, baby, let me dive._

_Baby, I need your help to come alive._

It’s a slow song for Kevin, whose raging electric guitar and gruff, reddish vocals usually lend themselves to anger and grief and resentment rather than love songs. But the yellow of the melody and the red of Kevin’s voice intertwine beautifully, and the slower pace would make a good interlude to break up the heavier tracks on the album. 

“Thea?” Andrew asks when Kevin falters to a stop. 

Kevin shrugs. “Neil did most of the lyrics.” It’s a big admission for him to make, Andrew knows. Kevin hates giving any other artist an inch of control over his music, so letting Neil do the lyrics is big for him. 

“Josten, got a special lady?” Andrew intones it with such little inflection that it takes Neil a moment to realize he’s being asked a question. 

“Oh—I—no. I don’t really swing that way.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow. “A special man you’re just calling _she_ for the sake of sales, then.”

Neil shakes his head stubbornly. His scars catch the light at this angle, making them pop out starkly on his face. “I don’t really swing at all. The lyrics are just words I thought would sound pretty together.”

“Right,” Andrew says. He could pretend to himself that the question had been a totally necessary professional question, but the truth was, he’d just wanted to know if Neil had someone. Not that it had mattered, because Neil is annoying and an idiot and altogether not Andrew’s type, and Andrew doesn’t care who or if he’s dating. “Well. From the top.”

***

By the time he gets home, Andrew is in a foul mood, which he is somehow grateful for. It’s an improvement from the nothingness of this morning. He’d been a clean slate waiting to be smashed, and even if now all he’s covered with are angry scribbles, at least it’s better than blankness. 

He digs out a box of sugary cereal and eats it dry and straight from the box for dinner. Nicky would say a habit like this means he needs to get a boyfriend, or at least some friends, but Nicky’s an idiot and Andrew isn’t in the habit of taking advice from him. Anyway, in an ideal world, the hypothetical boyfriend would be smart enough not to deter Andrew from eating cereal if he so desired. In an ideal world, someone would want to stick around Andrew long enough to be his boyfriend. 

Infuriated at the train his thoughts have jumped on, Andrew slams the cereal back into the cabinet and goes to his bedroom to fire up his laptop. He means to listen to the samples another artist who wants him on their album has sent, but instead of opening his email, he finds himself typing “Neil Josten” into the search bar. 

Unsurprisingly for someone who he presumes has only recently wrestled himself out of the Moriyama’s control, not much comes up. There are a few articles about him signing to the Foxhole Court, one or two uncomfortable interviews with him on YouTube, and a page called [neiljostenmusic.com](http://neiljostenmusic.com) that Andrew assumes is his website. There’s not much information on it, just a picture of Neil, a link that says “bio”, and a banner that claims new music is coming soon. 

When Andrew clicks on the bio, it’s short and not terribly informative: 

_Neil Josten is a Columbia-based singer in the midst of recording his first studio album under the Foxhole Court label. He has previously released music under the name Nathaniel Wesninski and the label the Baltimore Butcher’s Shop. His new album will be released next year._

So. Not terribly helpful. Andrew clicks back to the search bar and types in “Nathaniel Wesninski.” Again, there’s not much, but what he finds now is much more interesting. He learns that the Butcher’s Shop has actually been shut down—nothing can tell him exactly why, but he does learn that Neil had left the Butcher’s Shop shortly before it closed and (and this is what piques Andrew’s interest) directly after the death of the label owner, his father. Even more intriguingly, there’s nothing Andrew can find on the manner of Nathan Wesninski’s death. 

There are a good deal of scathing reviews of Neil’s first album under the control of his father—Andrew looks up the writing credits and sees that Kevin had been right; Nathan had done the writing for that album—a few YouTube interviews where Neil still has brown hair and scar-free skin, and a statement from Evermore saying that they regret losing him from their media conglomerate, but wish him the best. It’s strangely charitable for the Moriyamas, so Neil must have cut some kind of deal with them in order to leave. 

It’s then that Andrew gets annoyed with his own interest in Neil and slams to laptop shut, reminding himself that the only reason he should be looking into this is to make sure he’s not a threat to Kevin. And Andrew knows himself too well to try and pretend that had been the only reason. 

When he turns on the TV, the colors and voices floating out of it are all drowned out by the memory of Neil’s shining pink scars and aching blue voice. 

***

_going to be a little late to the studio today. expect me an hour later than usual._

The first thing Andrew sees in the morning after the blueness of his alarm is Kevin’s brusque text. It’s disturbingly uncharacteristic of him to be late, but the fact that he’s alerted Andrew of it beforehand takes most of Andrew’s concern about it off the table. Besides the fact that Kevin being willingly late to recording means he’s probably been body snatched by aliens, this also means that Andrew will have about an hour or so to himself in the studio. And as much as Andrew professes to not care about music, he feels rush of something as close to relief as he’ll ever be able to feel in this life when he walks into the studio early and thinks about the pure quiet he’ll be able to paint on, just him and the sound mixers and the empty air waiting to be flooded with color. It calms him in the same way talking to Bee does; when he gets the chance to work in the studio alone, it empties him out, quiets his mocking, vicious mind. 

But when the elevator doors slide open on the third floor, it only takes a second for him to realize he is not alone. Someone is painting the air the color of the sky at midday, and Andrew knows exactly who it is. 

_Let me lay you to rest,_

_forgive me for not running the gauntlet_

_you’d told me I’d best._

_I’ll be good from here on out,_

_but I won’t be quiet,_

_I’ll take the silencer off the barrel of my mouth._

Neil breaks off and swears, loudly, and then there’s silence punctuated by soft muttering. Andrew steps out of the elevator and walks to the studio as quietly as he can. The door is open, and through the doorway, he can see Neil slouched in the corner by the recording booth, his guitar on his lap and his head bent over the notebook he's scribbling in. Andrew leans up against the doorframe and watches as Neil picks the guitar back up and tries again. 

_Let me lay you back down_

_forgive me for bleeding_

_instead of leaving town_

_This time, I’ll be good,_

_but I won’t be quiet,_

_I’ll call the shots like I sh—_

Neil breaks off the moment he realizes he’s being watched. Andrew _sees_ the fight-or-flight spasm take over his body for the smallest fraction of a second, and then the other man just looks up calmly and, when he sees it’s only Andrew, carefully puts his guitar on the ground. 

“The fact that recording studios don’t have windows makes me very unhappy,” he says, so casually that Andrew nearly misses what he’s implying. 

“If I were someone else you would have jumped.” It’s not quite a question, not quite an answer. 

“Depends on who you were.” Neil stands up, stretches, shrugs. “I’m assuming Kevin told you I have a Moriyama origin story. I’m sure you get it.”

“We are on the third floor.”

Neil makes a _so what_ gesture. “A broken leg only keeps you from running if you let it. Did you like what you eavesdropped on?”

“I would hardly call it eavesdropping if you had the door open.”

“Whatever. Give me an opinion. That opening verse is giving me trouble.”

Andrew looks at him for such a long time that someone who was less flippantly unconcerned with Andrew’s potential dangerousness would have faltered. Then, despite himself, he says, “Do you have a chorus yet?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty much the only thing I have worked out for this fucking thing so far.”

“Let me hear it.”

Neil pauses. He’s a creature of motion, always doing something with his hands or glancing around the room—small, routine, unthreatening gestures that seem designed to help him fade into the background. “You want to hear it?”

Andrew blinks at him, once and slowly. “If you want an actual opinion, I need to know what you’re going for so I can tell you if that verse fits in.”

“Oh.” Neil fumbles for a moment, and then picks his guitar back up. “I, uh, okay.”

It takes him hardly a moment to find the chords, and then he’s off again. 

_If I run, let me die,_

_Put a bullet through my eye,_

_Say Hail Mary over me,_

_and I’ll scatter your ashes deep in the sea._

_If I run, let me fall,_

_seize the world and burn it all,_

_say goodnight instead of goodbye_

_and I’ll watch your smoke float up to the sky._

Neil muffles his guitar and lets the still, empty air settle down in between them like a living thing going to sleep. Andrew can still feel Neil’s voice reverberating somewhere deep in his chest, bouncing off his bones and into the hollowness and back again. 

“I see,” is all he says. 

Neil makes an abrupt, inarticulate gesture and puts down the guitar. He looks deeply uncomfortable, but also somehow defiant. It’s a strangely attractive combination on him. Andrew fucking hates it. 

“I think,” Andrew says finally, once he’s sure he can speak without fury or something else infiltrating his voice, “that if you are going for an A-B-A-B rhyme scheme in the chorus, you should also try it in the verses. It will give you more continuity.”

Neil nods, and reaches for his notebook to scribble the tip down, seemingly grateful to have something to do more than anything else. 

Andrew could stop there, let that be all, let Neil think that Andrew doesn't really care about the song one way or another besides a cold, professional interest in making it better so the label will look good. That is what Andrew should do. 

Andrew is very good at doing what he shouldn’t. 

“Neil,” he says, not looking at Neil. “The chorus is very good.”

“Oh,” Neil says. “Thank you.”

Andrew nods. “Send me some demos of your other songs when we’re done with Kevin today. Ones that are ready for at least some preliminary mixing. Make sure I have them by tonight.”

And then he turns around, walks right back out of the studio so he doesn't have to hear Neil respond, and doesn't stop walking until he’s back in his car in the parking lot. 

He stays there until Kevin arrives so nothing else stupid happens. 

***

“Andrew.”

Andrew rolls over onto his back so he can press the phone to his ear better, staring up at the dark, nebulous ceiling. “Josten.”

“I’m a little offended at the change you suggested in the third stanza of ‘Just You Wait,’” Neil says without preamble. “I think _nation_ and _patience_ rhyme just fine.”

“How does it feel to know that you are the only songwriter who can’t tell what rhymes and what doesn’t,” Andrew says boredly. 

“Okay, first of all—“

Neil launches into an impassioned tirade about slant rhyme, half rhyme, and orally rhythmic rhyme that Andrew tunes out without further thought. This is the third night in a row Neil has called him to talk about the changes Andrew had made to the songs he’d sent him. He’s full of half-ironic complaints and meticulously detailed questions about every minor change Andrew has made—some of which he agrees with and some of which he takes passionate issue with. What Andrew really likes—really respects—is that Neil loves every single change the Andrew has made due to the color of the song. He never questions it when Andrew just says he’d had a feeling about it. 

Andrew, for his part, deeply dislikes human interaction both as a concept and a reality, but for some reason, hasn’t told Neil to stop calling him yet. He just lays in bed and stoically defends his decision to Neil into the wee hours of the morning. When he falls asleep afterwards, his dreams are full of shades of blue and sarcastic one-liners. When he wakes up, he rarely reaches for the knives under his pillow. 

“—and quite honestly, if poets and songwriters didn’t incorporate non-traditional rhyming into their work, you’d be seeing a whole lot less of complicated rhyme schemes and a whole lot more of free verse, so eat my dick, Andrew,” Neil finishes. 

Andrew thinks about it for a minute. “You are wrong.”

Neil makes a sound like a minor avalanche. “What part of that incredibly detailed speech was wrong? You can’t just discount the whole thing.”

Andrew considers this. “It was all wrong. Just come up with better fucking rhymes, Josten.”

“It’s staying,” Neil says stubbornly. “ _Nation_ and _patience_ are staying, fuck you.”

Andrew doesn’t reply to that, suddenly exhausted by the idea of even opening his mouth. There’s a long silence. 

“Andrew?” Neil asks after a minute. “Are you falling asleep?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

They sit in quietness on opposite ends of the phone line. Andrew thinks that Neil is perhaps the only person who has never required more energy from him than he’s wanted to give. Neil takes his stony silence and doesn’t try to sculpt it into anything else. 

“Neil,” he says. 

Neil makes an indistinguishable sound of response. 

“Why did you sign with the Foxhole Court?” He couldn’t have said what had forced the words out of his mouth in that moment, only that they’ve been waiting to be asked for a while. 

There’s a brief silence punctuated by a rustling sound, like Neil had suddenly sat up straighter in bed. Or not in bed. Andrew realizes that he has no idea where Neil is. Maybe creatures made of scars and sarcasm like Neil don’t need to sleep. Maybe Neil doesn’t even own a bed. 

“If you answer you can take a turn,” Andrew says flatly. 

After a indescribable moment, Neil says, “I wanted to get outside the Moriyama’s control, and I knew that if I came here, Kevin could help me out. I helped him out with getting back on his feet before he left for Palmetto, and he owed me. I figured this was the best choice.”

It’s not exactly the answer Andrew was looking for, but he’ll take it. He can tell it’s the truth, if nothing else. 

“Your turn.”

“Do you have synesthesia?”

Andrew feels like the bed has been yanked out from under him. He’s not _offended_ , he just—he hadn’t realized Neil had been watching as closely as he’s been watching Neil. It makes Neil more interesting. Andrew doesn’t want to be interested. 

“How did you know?” 

“My mother had it. I just—some of the things you say sound similar to the way she used to describe music. I had a feeling, I guess.”

There’s a long pause, and then Andrew says, “I’m taking another turn.”

“Okay.”

“Had?”

“What?”

Andrew can imagine exactly what Neil looks like right now: eyebrows drawn together, eyes half shut, teeth worrying along his bottom lip. “Your mother _had_ it.”

“Oh.” A short exhalation. “My father killed her.” He says it baldly, without inflection. 

“Was that why—“

“No. That was a long time ago.”

“You do not even know what I was asking.”

“You were going to ask me if that was why I left the Butcher’s Shop,” Neil says, correctly. “It wasn’t.” There’s a long pause, and then he says, “Thanks for the help with my music as always. I’ll see you tomorrow in the studio.”

He hangs up without further ado, leaving Andrew to wonder if, for the first time in his life, he’d been the one to ask for more than someone was willing to give. 

***

The thing with Drake hadn’t been the end of the world; Andrew keeps needing to remind himself of that. Bee always tells him the aftermath of a traumatic event can take years to resolve but Andrew hates that, hates the idea of it clinging to him like cobwebs, dragging it after him like chains. He prefers to slice everything that could possibly weigh him down off cleanly. He likes to box everything up until all that remains is annoyance and numbness. 

But still. Some part of his brain still thinks that Thanksgiving had been the end of the world. That ever since then, he’s been living in the apocalypse, endless apathy punctuated with brief moments where it floods back in and he lives in vivid fight or flight mode. 

When it comes to fight or flight—well. There is a reason Andrew always carries knives. 

He’d woken up in a numb state of lethargy that morning, a state that had only, for the first time, worsened by the blue tone of his alarm clock. It reminds him of the night before, of the hissing internal accusation of _you went too fast, you pushed too hard, you’re just like them_. 

He leaves the house without eating breakfast. 

The studio feels like a cage with all three of them in the same room. Kevin and Neil are mostly doing their own thing today, thank God; Kevin had upped Neil’s feature tracks from one to two, and they’re in the process of writing the second song rather than working on finishing up the first today. But even just being in such close proximity to them makes his skin prickle, especially when Kevin makes a sudden move or raises his voice a little to make a point. There’s something about the taller man’s height and weight and undeniable physical power that seems ominous, even sickening to Andrew in his current mood. 

And then it happens: Kevin asks Andrew’s opinion on something, and, when Andrew doesn’t reply, tacks on an ironic, exasperated _Andrew, please._

And Kevin should know better. Kevin should really fucking know better. 

Something inside Andrew breaks like a bone, smashing his tenacious grasp on his self-control to smithereens. His vision whites out for a moment, letting that rush of adrenaline, that _kill or be killed_ response flood all of his senses, and then he’s halfway across the room, the handle of his knife cool in his hands and his face set like stone and this is more than he’s felt in weeks—in months—the last time he’d gotten this angry he’d been arrested and all he can think is that his knife is hungry to be used, and he is hungry to use it. 

Kevin backs up so fast that all the sound equipment behind him falls over, and the noise overloads Andrew’s senses to the point of being unbearable; he can’t think, he can’t speak, all he can do is lash out in an ineffectual protest against his inevitable and perpetual helplessness. 

Kevin is saying something in a shaky, rapid, falsely calm voice, and Andrew’s vision is turning red at the edges, there’s something awful and empty and destructive in him and he hates being like this, he hates it he hates it he hates it—

And then Neil puts his hand right above Andrew’s shoulder. Right above the shoulder that’s connected to the arm that’s connected to the hand that’s connected to the knife. Right above it, so they’re not touching each other at all. 

“Andrew,” he says, one word and nothing else. And the edges of Andrew’s vision are filled with the color of the sky on the hottest summer day. 

He exhales. 

Kevin edges around the two of them, his hands clenched at his sides. He doesn’t say anything, which is perhaps the worst part. For a moment it feels like Andrew is back in college, constantly being suspiciously watched by his brother and cousin, constantly absorbing the words people throw at him, constantly hearing _sick, monster, psycho_ trailing behind him. _He killed a man. He killed his mother. He tried to kill himself. He’ll kill you if you piss him off_. 

For a moment he believes them. 

“Andrew,” Neil says again, and Andrew realizes that he has been talking for longer than Andrew has been listening. 

“What,” he says, and the word drops to the floor, heavy like a ball of lead. Forcing it out exhausts him to his core. 

“Put the knife back in your armband,” Neil says, calmly and firmly like this is a routine question to be asking one’s producer. 

Andrew just stares at him blankly. 

Neil, undeterred, follows this up with: “Where are your keys?”

Andrew fishes in his pocket, pulls out the keys to the Maserati, and drops them on the floor. Neil holds his gaze unwaveringly for a moment, and then picks them up. “Let’s go,” he says, so mildly that Andrew is almost offended by the lack of outrage. 

In the lobby, they pass Kevin, who’s sitting with his back against the wall and his head in his hands. Andrew is unable to summon up any guilt. When Kevin looks up and opens his mouth, Neil shakes his head and says, “See you tomorrow, Day. Work on that riff we talked about, okay?”

They’re out in the parking lot before Kevin can respond. 

“Which one is yours?”

Andrew points at the Maserati. 

“Mind if I drive?”

“Do whatever the fuck you want, Josten,” Andrew says heavily. His hand is still clenched around his knife. He doesn’t know why he’s coming with Neil. Maybe it’s just because he doesn’t know what he’d do otherwise. He has always been good at self-destruction. 

They get into the car; Neil in the driver’s seat, Andrew in the passenger’s seat. It’s a strange feeling to be sitting on the other side of the car. 

Neil slides his seat back a few inches, and then backs out of the parking spot with the practiced carefulness of someone who doesn’t drive often. If he wasn’t so fucking tired, Andrew might have mocked him, but as it is he just watches Neil turn out of the parking lot and pull onto the main roads with a sense of profound detachment. 

“Aren’t you going to ask where we’re going?”

“No.”

“Not concerned I’m going to kill you?”

“I’d like to see you try,” Andrew says flatly. “I couldn’t do it, I doubt you can.”

He inspects Neil for a reaction and doesn’t get one. Maybe that’s just because the side of Neil’s face that’s more disfigured is facing him, and it’s harder to judge his expression under the scars. Maybe it’s because Neil’s scars mean that he, like Andrew, can no longer be shocked by horrifying things. After so many brushes with death, it loses its terror. 

They drive until the urban streets of Columbia fade away into the industrial highways, punctuated by sleazy gas stations and grim factories. Neil is quiet, which Andrew appreciates and is slightly surprised by. He knows Neil likes to run his mouth, has opinions about everything. There’s no way he doesn't have them about Andrew’s outburst. 

They pull into the parking lot of a gas station and Neil wordlessly gets out. He doesn’t lock the car behind him, something Andrew is both offended by and grateful for. On the one hand, that’s Andrew’s car he’s being careless with; on the other, it would have made Andrew feel trapped, to be locked in when Neil was gone. 

Andrew looks down at his hands and finds that somewhere between Columbia and the gas station, he had put the knife back in his armband. He doesn't know how to feel about that. He doesn’t if he can feel anything about that. 

Neil gets back into the car, hands Andrew two candy bars, and keeps driving. 

They’re twenty miles and one and a half candy bars away from the gas station before Neil speaks again: “It’s my turn, right?”

When he glances at Andrew, Andrew nods. 

“What happened back there?”

Andrew pauses. Thinks about giving the shortest version possibly can. Thinks about pushing Neil too hard for information last night. 

“I doubt you want my entire life story,” he says with a hint of self-deprecating irony, “but I’m sure Kevin told you I grew up in the system.”

“He didn’t,” Neil says. “He hasn’t told me much about you at all.”

His voice, a floating river of blue, dances at the corners of Andrew’s eyes. He closes them. “I was living with foster families for most of my life. The last one before juvie was—“ he changes his mind, skips over the good parts, skips over why he stayed for so long. That’s for a another day. “I had a step-brother. Drake.” The name feels dirty on his tongue. 

Neil nods, his expression unreadable and his eyes on the road. 

“When I told my uncle, he said I was making things up.” Andrew takes a bite of chocolate, lets the sweetness spread through his mouth. “He said what had happened was normal brotherly love, that I was a monster to make those accusations. He said I was doing it for attention.” 

He lets Neil fill in the blanks, which only takes a few seconds. 

“Oh,” Neil says. 

“Drake was not the first to tell me he’d stop if I said _please_. Kevin knows better than to use that word.”

There’s a long silence between them, deep and filled with the rushing in Andrew’s ears, like he and Neil are standing on opposite sides of a river. 

“I left the Butcher’s Shop because my father was going to kill me,” Neil says, abruptly, like he’d been meaning to say it this whole time and has only now remembered to get the words out of his mouth. “He said he couldn’t afford the losses on a second album, and that he had no use for me otherwise. He was going bankrupt, the label was losing money, and the Moriyamas were on his tail about it. I don’t think there was anything he could have done to get back in their good graces at that point, but he thought killing me might do it.”

Andrew is silent, swallowing the last of his chocolate, turning Neil’s words over and over in his head like shiny stones. 

“So he tried to kill me,” Neil repeats. “And I killed him instead. Cut the Moriyamas’ losses for them.”

So that had been the deal Neil had struck: his father’s life for his freedom. If the little he knows about Neil’s father is anything to go by, the world is better off now. “I would imagine you did not walk away unscathed,” Andrew says. 

Neil laughs, tiredly. His scars both move with and sit on top of his skin, like they’ve been projected there, bright and shining. “I’ve never walked away from anything unscathed.”

Andrew does not say he’s sorry, just like Neil hadn’t either. They know better to apologize for what other people have done. 

“Turn around at the next exit,” Andrew says, “we’ve run far enough.”

***

“So what you’re saying is that you have a crush,” Nicky says, and Andrew feels regret for calling him less as an emotion and more as a physical sensation that permeates every inch of his body. 

“No,” he says, because he can’t even think of a complete sentence that would be strong enough to put Nicky off of this idea, and he hates Neil anyway, hates his heart-felt lyrics and blue eyes and sharp, wry smile that lights up his whole face. Hates his affinity for playing the same three chords over and over while he thinking of the next lyric in a song. Hates his only slightly ironic passion for Taylor Swift music. “That is not what I said,” he adds, just in case Nicky is a mind reader and somehow interpreted that train of thought to mean the opposite of what he meant. 

“Okay, what you technically said was _Kevin is working with a new artist_ , and after I asked what he was like, you said _he could be worse_ , but what you were _really_ saying was, _I’m in love with him and I want you to officiate our wedding_.”

This is why Andrew hates Nicky. 

“You aren’t legally able to officiate weddings,” he points out. 

Nicky makes an affronted sound. “Do you really think I wouldn’t get my minister’s license _just for you_?”

Andrew stares at the ceiling of his apartment. There’s a crack forming by the window. Renee will know someone who can fix it; she’s into that home decoration stuff. Nicky is still chattering in his ear, something about a blue and gold color scheme and jelly bean party favors for the guests. Andrew used to want to kill Nicky all the time, but these days he only wants to kill him sometimes, like now. 

“Nicky,” he says. 

“Yes?”

Andrew hangs up. And then he calls Neil. 

***

Staying late at the studio after everyone else has gone home is both Andrew’s favorite and least favorite thing to do. On the one hand, it gives him time to really work on the music, to really fine-tune every note and harmony until the colors blend seamlessly into each other and the composition is complete. On the other hand, it’s admitting that he cares about what he does. That he enjoys it. It’s a foreign feeling that’s been building up inside him in tiny increments for years, like rock sediment or moss. He’s still learning to live with it. 

Tonight calls for working late regardless of whether or not he wants to face his feelings about the matter; Neil and Kevin have finished the demos of their songs for Kevin’s album and Andrew needs to start mixing them if they want to make the deadlines the Foxhole Court set up for production. So here Andrew is, a cup of Bigby hot chocolate on the desk beside him—caffeine doesn’t work well with his meds—and a pair of headphones on, staring down a clock that tells him it’s well past midnight. 

He’s not surprised it’s taken him this long to get a good mix of the song. Not only is it the slower love song Neil and Kevin had demoed for him that first day—Andrew always finds slower songs harder to work with—but he’s also not used to working with blue vocals. On a really good day, sometimes he and Kevin will stumble upon a really good harmony that tinges a song blue, but having Neil’s raw material already there throws him off. But Andrew thinks that this incarnation of the song is damn near perfect; after days and days of production, he’s managed to perfect the harmonies until, at one point in the song, Kevin’s red voice and Neil’s blue one blend into a perfect shade of purple for a glorious moment. 

Yeah, sometimes Andrew really likes staying late at the studio. 

After saving the song file and emailing it to Kevin and Neil—they’ll still be awake; like him, they’ve seen too much of the underbelly of the world to sleep at night—he opens up one of Neil’s songs. Not the ones he’s working on with Kevin, one of his solo ones. 

He thinks he might want to produce for Neil. He thinks he might want to do a whole lot of other things for Neil, too. 

Looking at Neil is like staying late at the studio—he wants it and he hates it and he’s constantly fighting against the urge to _cut it off, destroy it, ruin it, end it_. He likes his life sleek and streamlined, unburdened by emotion or attachment. Kevin, Nicky, Aaron. Music. Neil. They weigh him down like an anchor, hindering his ability to slice them cleanly out of his heart and move on. He’s learning to live with that, and not in a bad way. 

Andrew’s phone rings. He stares at it for a long moment, feeling a remarkable detachment from his duty to pick it up and answer, and then answers. 

It’s Neil. 

“I just listened to the song,” he says in lieu of a greeting. “You did an amazing job, Andrew.”

“You couldn’t have texted?” Andrew says flatly. “I’m working.”

“Yeah, whatever, Minyard. You want company? I’m not getting any sleep either way.”

Andrew considers this. Neil will bother him if he drops by. Andrew probably won’t get much done for the rest of the night if he drops by. Andrew won’t be alone with his thoughts if he drops by. “Do what you want,” he says. 

“Okay, I’m coming and I’m bringing doughnuts,” Neil says, correctly interpreting his response as a _yes_ , which sends a thrill of annoyance through Andrew’s chest. His voice echoes in Andrew’s ears and across his eyes. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Neil.”

“Yeah?”

For a moment, not even Andrew is sure of what’s about to come of his mouth, and then says, “When you said you don’t swing.” And then just. Stops. Because he doesn’t want that sentence to turn into a question, because that would be acknowledging something in him that would make Nicky squeal, because he thinks he might be afraid of Neil’s answer, no matter what it is. 

“When I said I don’t swing, what I really meant was that I only swing for certain people,” Neil says, and Andrew can hear the smile in his voice. Can picture what he must look like right now, head tilted back and eyes half-closed, a slow smile spreading across his face. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

***

The sky is fading from red to purple by the time Andrew Minyard steps out of the studio. It’s one of those restless, glittering evenings where the city’s nightlife beckons enchantingly from a few streets over, but Andrew’s head is mercifully silent tonight. He’s been working all day, and it’s cleaned him out inside, has quieted the razor-sharp memories that usually haunt him and replaced it with quiet and blueness. The deadline for the production on Neil’s single is tomorrow, but he’s already emailed the file to Wymack; he’s satisfied with what he’s done with it so far. 

Scuffing the toes of his heavy boots into the cracked pavement, he crosses the parking lot behind the studio—Allison’s car is still there because she’s behind on paperwork, as she’d told Andrew in passing this morning—and clicks open the driver’s door of the Maserati. He puts the keys in the ignition, rolls down the windows, and turns up the radio. Kevin’s album dropped a few weeks ago, and his singles have been playing nonstop, especially the love song he’d co-written with Neil. Andrew had known he’d stumbled across something good when he’d been mixing that. He allows himself a moment of self-satisfaction and pulls out of the parking lot in the direction of the trashy Chinese take-out place near his apartment. Usually he’d be satisfied with ice cream, but it’s a been a long day, and he’d promised to pick up some real food and bring it back home when he got done with work anyway. 

By the time he’s in the elevator of his apartment building, he can feel his phone buzzing in his pocket, and knows without looking who it is—the same person who’ll be eating the Shanghai-style noodles in one of the takeout bags Andrew is currently carrying. 

He entertains the idea of not picking up for a solid minute, but he knows he’ll get no peace if he doesn’t, and so, shifting the weight of both bags to one hand, he digs the phone out of his pocket and picks up. 

“Are you almost home?” Neil asks. “I’m fucking starving; if you’re staying later than you’d planned just tell me and I can pick up the food.”

The elevator doors ping open and Andrew steps out and starts heading down the hallway towards the apartment. 

“Andrew?” Neil asks impatiently.

“Shut up,” Andrew says, and opens the door to their apartment. Neil is on the other side of the door, phone pressed to his ear and a scowl on his phone. 

“First of all—oh. Hi.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow. “Aren’t you going to hang up? It’s rude to talk on the phone when you're talking with someone else.”

“Shut up,” Neil mimics, and hangs up. “Did you get my noodles?”

Andrew hands him the container of food, tosses him a pair of chopsticks, and they go to settle down on the sofa in the living room. It’s a worn routine, but it hasn’t lost it charm yet.

There is no feeling farther than the white rage that consumes him in those fight-or-flight moments than this. Sometimes, on good days, Andrew can barely remember what that feels like. Sometimes, on good days, this is what exists: he and Neil eating takeout on the sofa, Neil insisting they watch Rupaul’s Drag Race and keeping up a stream of scathing commentary, the room growing dark around them and the rest of the world miles away. This is all that has ever existed. 

 _“Other people will not understand why you are with me,”_ Andrew had said after the first time Neil had mumbled _yes or no,_ waited for a _yes_ , and then leaned in to kiss him. 

Neil had snorted. _“Who needs other people?”_

The answer to that question, Andrew now knows, is _not us_. They have never waited for the world’s understanding because they have never needed it. That’s the truth of the matter, and Andrew has always valued the truth. 

When the night has progressed into a state of dimness so deep that the flickering TV is the only light in the room, and Neil’s head, after a slurred request of permission, has dropped to Andrew’s shoulder, Andrew says, “Neil.”

“Hm.”

Andrew opens his mouth, feels it fill with the room’s darkness. He closes it. Tightens his arm around Neil’s shoulders. Wonders how he got here. “Forget it.”

There’s another long silence, one that smooths out the edges of Neil’s breathing until it’s apparent that he’s asleep. Andrew turns off the TV. 

“Neil,” he says again, and gets no response. He lets out a long breath. He doesn’t even know what he would have said. There are words that will never come out of his mouth because they have been ruined for him, and he knows Neil will never expect him to say them. So what he says instead is: “Your voice was the first blue one I ever saw.”

If Neil was awake, he would know what Andrew means.

**Author's Note:**

> You made it to the end?? congrats. thank you for reading. 
> 
> -kudos and comments make my heart sing  
> -you may reblog the [Tumblr post ](https://iaquilam.tumblr.com/post/162792213655/where-everything-is-good-by-iaquilam-shut-up) for this fic to spread the word if you so desire  
> -you may find me on Tumblr [here ](https://iaquilam.tumblr.com). I'm not very active because I have recently discovered I am a 300 year old sea turtle who hates fandom discourse inside, but if you send me questions I will answer them, and I will keep y'all updated about my next fic  
> -speaking of my next fic I don't think it will be an andreil one??? lemme know what y'all think.
> 
> thank you again for reading!!! the support I get from the fic reading/writing community is amazing and I love you guys!


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